Hark, our vacation has come to an end! I will summarize the rest of our week for you:

  • Thursday morning we headed to Chinatown. There we ate Dim Sum for breakfast (lots of interesting-looking, small plates [like tapas], most of them stuffed with shrimp or pork). We also headed into a local market that had a cool Asian bookstore. After that we did the compulsory visit to the Space Needle to see the “Famous 520′ View” – which was fun. Will’s favorite part by far was the ride up to and down from the observation deck in the windowed elevator. In the afternoon we sampled brews at the Issaquah Brewhouse, owned by Rogue (in Issaquah, WA – a quick drive down I-90, East of Seattle). Finally, we ate sushi for dinner. This was also the only place where we found geoduck on the menu. It is a large phallus-shaped clam that is native to the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, it was not prepared that well and thus was far from the best thing we ate at dinner that evening.
  • Friday we visited the Capitol Hill area for breakfast at a place called El Greco. The food was very good – the best breakfast we’d had in Seattle. We then took Will to play at a very cool park: Gas Works Park. In the middle of the park lie the remains of a giant, old, rusted Coal and Oil Gasification plant. Very cool. We drove around to do some shopping the rest of Friday afternoon, and found another great bottle shop while doing so. Dinner was awesome – Indian food at a place close to our hotel: Raga Cuisine of India. We actually had reservations that evening for a French restaurant that told us that bringing a child was okay, but it was too far away considering we’d have to drive through Friday rush hour traffic. I thought it was French based on the description in our guide book. It is, in fact, a Portuguese restaurant, named Brasa. If I’m ever back in Seattle, I’ll make a point of eating there, because the menu looks good.

Saturday, as you might expect, was more mundane: packing, fast food breakfast, driving to the airport, getting through security with a crazy, hyper 2-year old, flying back to Atlanta (Will actually napped for a bit on this flight, mercifully), waiting on our luggage (we took everything as carry-on, but had to check Will’s car seat), waiting on the shuttle to take us to the car in an off-airport parking lot, and then the final drive home.

The real fun of returning home will be adjusting back to Eastern time. Malin and I should be fine – it’s Will that may prove a challenge. The last thing we need is him staying up until midnight every night. We got him to go to sleep at 11:30 last night, and we’re going to try to get him to bed at 10:30 tonight, 10 tomorrow, and then back to normal at 9:30 on Tuesday night. We’ll see how it goes.

Malin took lots of pictures while we were out there (surprise, surprise), so I will try to get some to post here for everyone to see.